Unity in Faith?: Edinoverie, Russian Orthodoxy, and Old Belief, 1800-1918

The little known history of an attempt to end a religious schism in imperial Russia, and the questions it raised about church and state.

Established in 1800, edinoverie (translated as "unity in faith") was intended to draw back those who had broken with the Russian Orthodox Church over ritual reforms in the seventeenth century. Called Old Believers, they had been persecuted as heretics. In time, the Russian state began tolerating Old Believers in order to lure them out of hiding and make us...